How fintech can scale across Europe: webinar on barriers

Finextra and Visa Direct will host an online webinar to discuss how fintechs can scale across Europe amid fragmented markets and varied regulation. The session will draw on findings from Finextra’s forthcoming 2026 State of Fintech in Europe report.

The panel will feature Olga Ovchinnikova, VP and Head of Visa Direct Europe at Visa; Benjamin Kruk, Executive Director and Global Head of Product & Client Solutions at Bitpanda Enterprise; and Liam Gray, Head of Customer Relationships for UK & Europe at Plaid. Scott Hamilton, contributing editor and payments and liquidity expert, will moderate.

The discussion will examine expansion strategies for neobanks and fintechs in payments, wealth and lending, and the barriers companies encounter when growing across multiple European markets. The panel will compare options such as securing local licences, partnering with incumbent banks and payment processors, operating a hub-and-spoke model from a single market, and scaling through acquisitions or white-label agreements, noting trade-offs in speed, cost and control.

Speakers will address practical challenges that slow cross-border growth, including varied national regulations, inconsistent infrastructure and differences in customer behaviour and data availability between countries. Neobanks face differing licensing and deposit protection rules by jurisdiction. Payments firms must manage cross-border settlement, liquidity and adoption of new instant-payment rails. Wealth platforms contend with divergent disclosure and investor-protection regimes. Lenders need consistent credit data and underwriting standards to deploy risk models across markets.

The webinar will also consider technology and infrastructure developments, such as the use of artificial intelligence, advances in payments rails and growing adoption of digital-asset services. The panel will assess whether those technologies can be applied in ways that meet regulatory requirements and support cross-border operations rather than remaining limited to single markets.

Partnerships will be discussed as a route to faster entry. Examples include working with banks for deposits and compliance, collaborating with payments networks for rails and settlement, and using data providers for onboarding and credit decisioning. The panel will consider where partnerships reduce time to market and where they may limit product control or margins.

The organisers will place the conversation in a market context. Industry projections cited for the session show fintech expanding from about $85.52 billion in 2025 to $94.14 billion in 2026, according to Finch Capital. The panel will use those trends to frame choices about market entry timing, capital allocation and partner selection.

Organisers describe the agenda as covering expansion options, regulatory and operational obstacles and market selection. Registration details are available from Finextra.